Tony Orlando and Dawn is an American pop music group that was popular in the 1970s. Their signature hits include “Candida”, “Knock Three Times”, “Tie a Yellow Ribbon Round the Ole Oak Tree”, “Say, Has Anybody Seen My Sweet Gypsy Rose”, and “He Don’t Love You (Like I Love You)”.
Bell Records was desperate to have a real-life act to promote Dawn’s records. Orlando asked former Motown/Stax backing vocalists Telma Hopkins and Joyce Vincent Wilson, whom he had hired to work as background vocalists while producing Barry Manilow in the late 1960s, to become Dawn. The threesome then went on the road in 1971, on the success of “Candida” and “Knock Three Times”. After a tour of Europe, Hopkins and Vincent assumed background vocal duties in the studio, first recording on the late 1971 album Dawn Featuring Tony Orlando. The first single with their voices in the background was “Runaway/Happy Together” in 1972.